Thursday, April 7, 2016

Campagnolo Potenza?

When Larry spoke with them about becoming an Official Supplier to CycleItalia he described the partnership as probably the worst kind of "sponsorship". Why? He explained that first, both of us grew up in cycling using Campagnolo equipment and have enjoyed using it ever since, meaning they would not be stealing any customers from their rivals. Second, even if they turned us down, we were not going to run off to seek support from one of those rivals and third, we'd likely keep using it for the rest of our cycling lives. So why should they bother helping us?

Luckily for us, they saw some wisdom in a more formal relationship and have become good friends over the years. Just as in our other Official Supplier partnerships, we don't require agreements to "get X and provide Y" but just agree to help each other out whenever the opportunity arises. For this season they fixed us up with skewers to hold your bike atop our van's roof rack. Campagnolo wheel skewers are the ONLY ones we trust with your (and our) bikes!

So now we're going to tell you about their new groupset, POTENZA. This is NOT a $multi-thousand.00 groupset used only by pros or rich folks - not that there's anything wrong with those, but they wanted a 11-speed groupset that bike makers could equip their bikes with so potential customers could try Campagnolo out on a test-ride.

Back-in-the-day, customers wanting higher-end "pro quality" bikes most often chose a frameset from their favorite maker, then a component groupset, wheels, etc. to end up with a complete, custom-assembled bicycle. Sadly, those days are long-gone.

Now the trend is to buy a complete bike right-out-of-the-box. Campagnolo's competitors have been very good at supplying component groups to the big bike companies who now dominate the market. Just take a look at who sponsors pro teams these days - they're the only ones with the sales volume and budgets to pay teams millions to ride their bikes in addition to supplying a large fleet of them. Unless you're a big star (and sometimes even then) the days of having custom bikes made-to-measure for you by a trusted builder and then painted in the team livery are gone.

This means potential clients start out with bikes equipped by Campagnolo's competitors and with the shifting mechanisms varying from the most (we think) intuitive like Campy's "thumb does one thing, finger does another" to fingering two different levers or fingering the same lever but a little bit or more than a little bit, depending on which way you want to shift, people tend to stay with what they're familiar with - meaning unless you have groups spec'd on entry-level bikes, you lose out.

Campagnolo's known this for awhile but now they finally have an answer to this issue. The Potenza group claims to offer all the engineering and function of the top-end groupsets, but saves money with less expensive materials. Aluminum, steel and some composite bits vs carbon fiber and titanium for example. This used to be the case back-in-the-day at Campagnolo but they drifted away from it awhile back. Our standard rental bikes are equipped with 9-speed Mirage components that work just as well (and have lasted just as long) as the high-end stuff from the same production period!

What else do you get? How 'bout a 34 X 32 low gear? Finally Campagnolo offers a larger cogset for that "after-lunch gear" or to get you up the Passo Mortirolo. The rear shifter, unlike many of Campy's competitors, lets you shift up THREE cogs with one motion, making that "Ooops, I need to shift up to bigger cogs NOW!" moment much easier.

The new crankset looks like the latest 4-arm carbon fiber versions but is aluminum, something some of us prefer, as well as the polished silver finish available in addition to black. The new Power-Torque + crankset comes apart with no special tools. We STILL wish there were three rather than two chainrings for more individual ratios and to eliminate the rather large gap from 50 to 34 if you want low gears for real mountains, but we'll save the whining for another day.

We just put a Campagnolo Athena 11-speed triple groupset on Heather's bike in order to promote it a bit for our friends, but now it seems it'll be going away in favor of Potenza? (Update: Athena 11 triple is still shown in Campagnolo's 2017 catalog) We'll need to get our hands on one of these new groupsets sooner rather than later, so we can share more information about it's performance with you.

Why do WE even care about these lower-priced groupsets? First, they're affordable. We'd rather spend money on a great frame instead of on components that are lighter since we're far from featherweights ourselves. Second, we think Campagnolo's idea is a good one, we find those who rent our bikes and have never used Campagnolo often end up preferring it once they've spent a week riding around Italy with it. Potenza can only help that process!

Well, Campagnolo thinks a small price premium is justified and we don't yet know what the "street price" will be vs the competitor's groupsets. Vicenza knows their 10 speed groupsets won't be interesting enough to compete so they needed something with 11 to try to gain some spec on complete bikes at the lower price points. We hope it works!!

I'm happy to see another silver group but that crank just doesn't work IMO. No matter how much I try I can not warm up to it. I really wish that they would make a Chorus level (Ultrashift) group in silver alloy...that would make my day. I suppose I'll just keep using the alloy 10sp stuff I have until I'm no longer able to ride.

But wouldn't THAT crankset look pretty much the same? I think they're pretty much married to the carbon for the upper-end groupsets that get installed on carbon frames for racing, though I'm with you 100& on the looks factor, especially if the parts are going on a steel bike. But we're a minority at present :-(

To clarify, what I meant was an alloy group that functioned like Chorus (multiple shifts up/down unlike the current Athena) yet with a more traditional alloy crank like the earlier Athena 11 had (Ultra Torque instead of the current Power Torque). But yes, we certainly are in the minority.

As an aside, I had a great time at Eroica CA over the weekend with DT shifters and Delta brakes. :-)

Tough call there. Retro-inspired but not retro in usefulness. We'd love that but we're in the minority for sure. Glad you enjoyed EROICA CA - we couldn't make it but it's on our schedule for 2017. Meanwhile we'll be enjoying EROICA Primavera in Tuscany very soon.

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Piero Coppi

CycleItalia

Larry and Heather met while leading bike tours in Italy, married soon after, and have since enjoyed almost 30 years of cycling guide experience. We launched CycleItalia in 1998 (after a decade working with another tour operation) to share our unique passion for Italy with you. CycleItalia has its roots in the Italian cycling getaways we planned as a couple during our time off, exploring the little-traveled backroads of untouristed regions, discovering small family-run inns and enjoying authentic country cuisine. We coined the phrase "pedala forte, mangia bene!' (ride hard, eat well!) to describe our philosophy and while imitators come and go our clients tell us they just can't get the same authentic experience elsewhere. Join us and find out why 75% of our clients are repeat customers.